The Moth Presents All These Wonders

by Catherine Burns

  Then one day a student asked me about the national assembly. There was no way I could explain Congress without bringing up democracy and the outside world. And I was nervous that other students at the table were watching this conversation, so I answered as honestly as I could and as vaguely as I could.

  That night I couldn’t fall asleep. I was afraid that the student was trying to trick me into saying something so he could report on me.

  I was, in fact, writing a book in secret. I had pages and pages of notes hidden on USB sticks, which I kept on my body at all times. I thought, If those were discovered, would I disappear the way my uncle had, and would my mother then have to repeat the life that my grandmother lived through?

  Being in North Korea, if you tap into the fear that’s beneath the propaganda, is bone-chillingly depressing. That night I felt more alone and more afraid than ever.

  But the next day I ran into a friend of the student, and he said, “He thinks like you.” Then I realized the student was not making reports on me. The student was in fact genuinely curious.

  Now, this was even worse. I was now afraid of the consequences of that curiosity that I might have inspired. My role there was to plant a seed of doubt, but then what would happen to the student that I might have reached? Would he then be punished for questioning the regime? Or would he be doomed to a life of unhappiness? I was no longer sure if our truth, the truth of the outside world, would in fact help them.

  I adored my students. I called them my “gentlemen,” and they opened up to me little by little, through the letters that I assigned. And in those letters they talked about missing their mothers and their girlfriends, and also being fed up with the sameness of everything.

  Because their lives were only about the Great Leader, the only break they ever got was playing group sports. Some evenings I would watch them play soccer and basketball, and I would marvel at their beauty, such exuberant energy and joy and grace of their youth. I wanted to tell them about this incredible world outside, filled with the infinite possibilities that they so deserved.

  But all I was capable of doing was to observe that, while their body bounced, their mind remained stuck in that timeless vacuum of their Great Leader.

  On my last day, Kim Jong-il’s death was announced to the world. Everything came to a sudden end, and I saw my students from a distance as they were hauled away to a special meeting.

  Their faces looked at me, but their eyes didn’t see me. It was as if their souls had been sucked out of them. They had just lost their god, their parent, and the reason for everything in their world.

  I never got to say good-bye to them.

  The horror of North Korea is beyond famine and gulags. To survive there, real human beings have to not only believe in the lies of the Great Leader but also perpetuate them, which is a mental torture. It’s a world where all citizens are complicit in the deprivation of their own humanity.

  Towards the end of my stay, a student said to me, “Our circumstances are different, but we always think of you as the same as us. We really want you to know that we truly think of you as being the same.”

  But are we really the same? Maybe we were at some point, but there have been three generations of the Great Leader, and for seventy years the world has sat back and just watched. To me that silence is indefensible.

  Lies run so deep there because the center is rotten, and that rottenness is irrevocable. What would happen to my students, my young gentlemen, as they become the soldiers and slaves of their Great Leader, Kim Jong-un?

  If my uncle had managed to survive, would he be the same boy that had jumped off that truck?

  SUKI KIM is a novelist and an investigative journalist and the only writer ever to live undercover in North Korea. Born and raised in South Korea, Kim is the author of a New York Times bestselling investigative literary nonfiction, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite, and she has traveled to North Korea since 2002, witnessing the country during events surrounding Kim Jong-il’s sixtieth birthday celebration and his death in 2011. Her first novel, The Interpreter, was a finalist for a PEN Hemingway Prize, and her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, and the New Republic, where she is a contributing editor. A recipient of a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, and an Open Society fellowship, she has been featured on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria’s GPS and The Christiane Amanpour Show and on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Her 2015 TED Talk, which received a standing ovation from an audience including Bill Gates and Al Gore, has since drawn millions of viewers online.

  This story was told on September 6, 2015, at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia. The theme of the evening was The Razor’s Edge: The Moth at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Director: Catherine Burns.

  I’m gonna let y’all know now, I’m a preacher’s kid. I grew up in the church. I swear I have only missed, like, two Sundays out of my whole sixteen years of life.

  My grandfather, he was a minister. And he was my best friend. He was the person I could talk to about anything and everything.

  I’m sixteen now, but when I was ten, I wanted to be the kid who had anything anybody else had. I was the friend that, like, if you got the new video game—I had that video game but also another one…that was just about to come out…that you ain’t know about.

  So one day my friend came outside. He had these ugly, ugly sneakers on.

  I was like, “Yo, bro, I got those, man! That ain’t nothing…I already got those.”

  He was like, “A’ight…prove it!”

  I didn’t have them.

  So my grandfather, being a minister, he gets the money out of the collection plate. And I knew where he put the money.

  So I went upstairs, and I took the money. I did. It was like two hundred dollars. And I went on Third Avenue in the Bronx, and I bought the sneakers, and I went home.

  I walk in, and my grandfather, he’s going off. He found out the money was missing.

  He was screaming at my uncle, “Why would you steal my money?!”

  My uncle’s like, “I didn’t touch your money. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I should tell y’all that all the way home walking, I was talking junk.

  I’m with my cousin, and I’m like, “Yeah, when my grandpa asks me where I got the sneakers from…I’m gonna lie. I’m gonna say I got ’em from you.”

  And he’s like, “Ain’t gonna work.”

  So I walk in, and my grandpa’s going off…and I froze. I was like, Oh…he mad.

  And he said, “Christian! Come here!”

  I was like, “Huh?”

  He said, “Where’d you get those sneakers?”

  And I was like, “Funny story…uh…I went in your briefcase and got the money…yeah…”

  He said, “How much money did you take?”

  I said, “About two hundred dollars.”

  “WHAT?!”

  “About two hundred dollars.”

  “Boy, are you crazy?! Boy!”

  And then he said some very hard words. He said, “I will never be able to trust you again, but one day you are going to repay me for the money you took. I don’t know how, I don’t know when. But you are going to repay me.”

  I cried. It was terrible.

  Fast-forward a couple of years. I’m a drummer. I played the drums on the radio for Al Sharpton. And he paid me good. And have you ever had that thing where you start thinking about something and your mind goes [claps loudly].

  That’s when I was like, I remember Grandpa said I’m gonna repay him.

  So I didn’t get McDonald’s for two weeks in a row. And with that, plus my money from drumming, I got the money to pay him back. I put it in an envelope, and I took my grandpa out to dinner at his favorite place: Crown Donut on 161st Street.

  At first he was skeptical that I was taking him out.

  He said, “You got somebody pregnant?”

  I w
as only thirteen, I don’t know what he was talking about. I was like, “No, of course not! Don’t be absurd.”

  So we got our food, and I had on a coat—it was cold; it was early November. And so I took the money out of my side pocket and put it on the table.

  I was like, “It’s all there.”

  And he looked, and he said, “What’s this?”

  I said, “You said you didn’t know how, but I was gonna repay you. And I just repaid you.”

  And we started crying and hugging.

  He said, “Aw, I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Grandpa.”

  And I’m just glad that I got the chance to fulfill what my grandfather said, and pay him back and earn his trust back, because he said, “You know what? You surprised me. I’m proud of you. I trust you again.”

  And that was the last thing he ever told me, because two weeks after that he died.

  I found out he didn’t get to spend the money.

  And I was mad at my grandma, because I knew she had the money. I didn’t know what she did with it.

  And so a couple of days go by; we made funeral arrangements, I still didn’t know where the money went.

  But I went to go view the body, and my grandma, she stopped me, she said, “Chris?”

  I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She said, “You see that suit and them shoes he’s got on?”

  I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She said, “Your money paid for that.”

  And the expression on my face was like, What?!

  I was so proud that, number one: I got my trust back from my grandpa, and number two, he was stuntin’ in the suit and shoes I bought him.

  CHRISTIAN GARLAND participated in the Moth High School StorySLAM at DreamYard Preparatory School in the Bronx and told his story in the inaugural New York City High School GrandSLAM. These days he’s finishing up high school and writing/playing music. Someday he hopes to be a music producer.

  This story was told on December 16, 2013, at the High School GrandSLAM at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City. The theme of the evening was Face to Face. Directors: Micaela Blei and Catherine McCarthy.

  About five years ago, my youngest child came to me in the kitchen one night. It was right after her freshman year of high school.

  She said, “Mom, I really need to talk to you in private.”

  This was my third teenager. So I was worried. I know what a private talk means, and it usually means I would have to take care of some problem, or something slightly illegal that they’ve done.

  So I was a little concerned, but I said, “Okay.”

  We went in my bedroom, and my daughter sat down on a little green brocade chair I have, and I sat down on the end of my bed.

  She turned to me, and she said, “You know, Mom, I think I’m gay.”

  And I was so relieved.

  I thought, Oh, this is great, you know? Wonderful! Because I had kind of wondered what direction this youngest child of mine would take in her life. And I was really happy that she’d found out something about herself.

  I tried not to be too excited, because I didn’t want to scare her that I’d known something that maybe she wasn’t sure of. So we talked for a while and then went on our way.

  Sometimes I can be quite the helicopter mom, so for the next week, I called some gay friends to ask them what it was like for them when they came out, and how I could best support my daughter through this process.

  About a week later, I was sitting out on the porch. Very hot summer evening, drinking a glass of wine. And my daughter came and sat down on the bench next to me.

  I turned to her and said, “Hey, you know, I’ve talked to my friends, maybe you wanna talk to somebody about this. Maybe you have questions that I won’t be able to help you with.”

  And she turned to me and said, “You know, Mom, it’s not a gay issue. But a transgender issue.”

  I actually thought that she was probably confused. I was confused and not quite sure how to respond or what to do in that moment. So I let it just go for a week or two, because I thought, Let’s just see how this shakes out.

  But it was very apparent that this was what was happening.

  So I started doing a little bit more research, because what I realized at that point in my life, as liberal as I was, was I didn’t have a really clear understanding of the differences within the LGBTQ community.

  As I did my research, I became pretty scared and pretty worried for my child. I realized that there was a big difference between being gay and being transgender. That one was about who my child would love and build their life with, and the other was about who my child was in this world.

  I’d been through a lot with this youngest child of mine, and I wasn’t sure if I could do this.

  But we moved forward, slowly. All of a sudden, there were doctors and psychiatrists who were in our life, and they were these adults who were telling me what I needed to do to make my child whole.

  That was really hard, because I had been the parent who knew my child. I knew my children. I was the one in charge. I had been the one who directed and helped them with their lives. All of a sudden, these other people were telling me what I needed to do, and I felt lost.

  For a long time—at that time fifteen years—when people said, “Oh, how many children do you have?” I’d say, “Well, I am the mother of two daughters and a son.” That was a big part of my identity as a mother.

  I started reaching out to friends and family and even some acquaintances, and telling them what I was going through.

  They would always say, “Wow, that’s really big.”

  And I would say, “Yeah, it is really big.”

  They would say, “How do you feel about that?”

  And I would say, “I feel like I’m losing my daughter.” And it often felt that way. My child was changing before my eyes, and I didn’t always know how to deal with that.

  Then one day I was leaving the Y, and a girlfriend of mine came in. We’d known each other for about twelve years. I hadn’t seen her for a couple months.

  But we had met when our two youngest daughters were in preschool together. They had become friends, and my girlfriend and I had become friends. And in a really tragic accident, her daughter was killed about a year after we met.

  This really lovely, beautiful woman had managed to move forward with her life. And so, twelve years later, we were in the lobby of the YMCA and catching up on our families and our jobs. We had similar jobs with nonprofits, and I shared with her what was happening with our family.

  She’s this kind, gentle person, with big, big eyes, and she said, “Wow, Cybele, that’s huge.”

  And I said, “Yeah, I know.”

  She said, “How do you feel about that?”

  And I looked in my friend’s eyes, and I realized how selfish I’d been.

  Because my child had been able to come to me, and say, “Mom, I think I’m gay,” and a week later, “No, really I’m transgender.”

  We were going through this amazing process of transition. And I got to be a part of it. We were going through that with a lot of love and care.

  I looked in my friend’s eyes, who had lost her daughter, and I realized that I really hadn’t lost my daughter.

  I’d lost a gender. A title. It was that easy.

  And I say it’s easy, but it wasn’t always easy. Being the parent of a minor child who is going through transition means that you really are part of every single step of the process, and you’re signing papers and giving permission for your child to change their name, and to change their legal gender. And to start medical procedures and things like that.

  And through those processes, I would step forward with my son, but I always had this kind of step back with each one—an emotional step back. Then I would have to reevaluate how I was feeling. And then I would move forward again.

  About three years into my son’s transition, he came to me and said, “You know, Mom, the next
step is top surgery.”

  I really took a huge leap backwards with that one, because I loved my son’s body. And I couldn’t conceive of somebody changing it.

  I sat in the psychiatrist’s office at an appointment, and I tried to convince the psychiatrist that my son’s generation is really sexually fluid, and he would find a woman who loved him for the man that he is with the body that he had.

  And the psychiatrist gently reminded me that it wasn’t about sex, but about gender. And identity. And told me that my son thought of his breasts as warts on his body that just really needed to be removed as quickly as possible.

  That was such a hard concept for me, because I really loved his body. I had made his body. I felt like it was my body. It wasn’t mine, but I felt like it was mine. I was his mother.

  We drove home from that appointment, and my son was asleep in the car, because he’s a teenager. And I thought about how I felt about my body as a woman. How much I loved my breasts as a woman, as a mother, as a lover.

  And I leapt forward with my son.

  When I walked into the recovery room after his surgery, he looked at me with this huge smile on his face. Then he looked down at his chest, bound for the last time, and looked at me again with just this incredible smile. He was so happy. And at that moment his breasts became warts to me, too, so insignificant and unimportant.

  Ten days later we got home, and we were unpacking the car, and my son took his suitcase into his room.

  A few minutes later, he walked out of his room without his shirt on. He walked through the house, like a man does. For the first time, he was able to do that.

  And it was very calm. And quiet. And really beautiful. And incredibly natural.

  The hard part about telling this story for me is using the words my daughter or she or her, because the real truth is that for the last twenty years I have been the mother of one beautiful daughter and two amazing sons.

  CYBELE ABBETT is a mother, a grandmother, an artist, and a humanist. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she has lived in southern Oregon for the past eighteen years. Last summer Ms. Abbett quit her job as the executive director of a nonprofit in Ashland, Oregon, to pursue a lifelong dream to sail around the world with her consort, Michael.